When Louis XIV was poured a golden wine from Hungary at Versailles, the story goes, he called it “the wine of kings and the king of wines”. When Napoleon was sent to die on Saint Helena, a speck of rock in the South Atlantic, casks of a sweet wine from the Cape were shipped out to him. And when America’s founders raised a glass to their independence, tradition says the glass was filled with Madeira.
For most of wine’s history, sweet wines sat at the very top: the most expensive, the most celebrated and the most fought-over bottles on earth. Today they gather dust on the bottom shelf. “Dessert wine”, said with a shrug, at the end of the list and at the end of the meal.
I’ll be honest, this guide is a rescue mission. The good news is that the whole category is simpler than it looks, because there are only four ways to make a great sweet wine. Learn those four and you understand everything from Port to Sauternes, from Tokaji to ice wine. You also unlock what we think is the best value in fine wine today.
Watch the full breakdown
The one problem every sweet wine has to solve
Wine is made by fermentation, and fermentation is simple: yeast eats sugar and turns it into alcohol. Yeast is also relentless. Left alone, it keeps eating until there is no sugar left and the wine is bone dry, or until the alcohol climbs so high that the yeast can no longer survive.
So a sweet wine is, by definition, a wine where some of the sugar survived. Something stopped the yeast before it finished. There are four ways to do that:
- Stop the fermentation while there is still sugar in the wine.
- Dry the grapes, so there is more sugar than the yeast can handle.
- Freeze the grapes and press out only the sweet, concentrated juice.
- Let a fungus, the noble rot, concentrate the grapes for you.
You can also add sweetness from outside: blend unfermented grape juice into a dry wine, which the Germans call Süssreserve, or pour grape spirit into juice before it ferments at all, which gives mistelles such as Pineau des Charentes. Neither is how the great sweet wines are made. Every great sweet wine walks through at least one of the four doors above, and many walk through two: most Sauternes have their fermentation stopped by the winemaker, and Pedro Ximénez is dried, then fortified. Let’s open the doors one by one, easiest first.
Way 1: stop the fermentation
The first door is the most direct: halt the yeast mid-meal, while there is still sugar in the tank. There are two tools for the job.
The first tool is alcohol. Yeast cannot survive high alcohol, so partway through fermentation, while the wine is still sweet, the winemaker adds a strong grape spirit. In Port, that lifts the wine to around 20 percent. The yeast stops for good and the remaining sugar stays in the wine for ever. This is fortification, and it built a whole family of wines:
- Port, from Portugal’s Douro Valley, is the king of the family: sweet, dark and powerful, from young, bright Ruby to nutty Tawny aged for decades.
- Banyuls and Maury, from Roussillon at the eastern end of the Pyrenees, are the insider’s alternative. France calls them vins doux naturels, and they are among the rare wines that can stand up to chocolate.
- Pedro Ximénez, from Andalusia, is the extremist. The grapes are dried in the sun, then the wine is fortified, which gives a near-black, syrupy wine so sweet that a favourite Spanish trick is to pour it over vanilla ice cream. It may be the only wine that doubles as a topping.
- Madeira, from the Portuguese island in the Atlantic, is fortified and deliberately heated as it ages, copying the long tropical sea voyages that first gave it its taste. That makes it all but indestructible: bottles from the 18th century are still being opened and enjoyed today. It was also the favourite wine of colonial America. And it comes dry too: Sercial and Verdelho are the drier styles, Bual and Malmsey the sweet ones.
The second tool is cold. It is the gentle version: chill the fermenting wine until the yeast stops, then filter the yeast out while plenty of sugar remains. The masterpiece of the method is Moscato d’Asti, from Piedmont in northern Italy: lightly sparkling, grapey, joyful, and only about 5.5 percent alcohol. Wine snobs dismiss it. Wine snobs are wrong. It is the perfect brunch wine and the easiest way into this whole category. Many of Germany’s gently sweet Riesling Kabinetts follow the same logic: stop early, keep it light.
Way 2: dry the grapes
The second way is the oldest. The Greeks and the Romans were already doing it two thousand years ago, and the logic is simple: a grape is mostly water. Take the water out and the sugar concentrates. Ferment those half-raisins and the yeast cannot finish the job. It struggles in all that sugar, the alcohol rises, and it gives up with sweetness still left in the wine.
The Italians are the masters. Their method is called appassimento: after the harvest, the grapes are laid out on straw mats or racks, or hung in airy lofts, for weeks or months while they shrivel. It gives us Vin Santo, Tuscany’s amber “holy wine”, traditionally served with almond biscuits for dunking, and Recioto della Valpolicella, the sweet ancestor of Amarone. France’s version has the loveliest name of all: vin de paille, “straw wine”, from the Jura.
The grapes can also shrivel on the vine. That is how the sweet wines of Jurançon are made in south-west France, and how Vin de Constance is made in Constantia, on the edge of Cape Town, from Muscat left hanging until it shrivels. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Constantia was one of the most coveted wines in the world, ordered by the royal courts of Europe. Jane Austen wrote it into Sense and Sensibility as a remedy for a broken heart. And when Napoleon was exiled to Saint Helena, Constantia was shipped out to him there, reputedly one of the last pleasures of the man who had once ruled much of Europe.
Way 3: freeze the grapes
The third way is a polar expedition. For ice wine, Eiswein in German, healthy grapes are left on the vine deep into winter. Then, on a night when the thermometer drops to minus seven degrees or lower (minus eight in Canada), they are picked frozen solid, usually before dawn, and pressed while still frozen. The water stays behind as ice, and what trickles out is a thin stream of concentrated nectar. Some producers freeze their grapes in a cold room instead, which is called cryoextraction, but only grapes frozen on the vine make true ice wine.
It is a brutal gamble. Birds, rot or a mild winter can wipe out the crop before the freeze ever comes, and climate change is making true German Eiswein rarer almost every year.
That is why the style’s modern capital moved somewhere winter can be trusted: Canada. The Niagara Peninsula in Ontario freezes hard almost every year, and Icewine has become a national signature. The turning point came in 1991, when Inniskillin’s 1989 Vidal Icewine won the Grand Prix d’Honneur at Vinexpo in Bordeaux. The wine world’s establishment had to hand its top prize to a frozen grape from Ontario.
Real ice wine is expensive, because the yields are tiny, and it usually comes in half bottles. As a once-a-year treat with a fruit dessert, it is pure crystallised winter. Our ice wine guide goes further.
Way 4: noble rot
The last way is the strangest, the rarest and, by almost universal agreement, the greatest.
It starts with a fungus, Botrytis cinerea. On most grapes, in most weather, it is a disaster: grey rot, which ruins harvests. But under one very specific set of conditions it becomes what winemakers call noble rot. The recipe is misty, humid mornings, usually rising off a river, which let the fungus settle on ripe grapes, followed by warm, dry, sunny afternoons that stop it turning nasty. The fungus pierces the skins with microscopic filaments, water evaporates through the holes, and the grape shrivels into a furry, brownish-purple, frankly hideous little raisin.
Inside that ugly berry is the most concentrated, complex, honeyed juice in wine. The fungus does not only concentrate the sugar, it adds flavours of its own: honey, saffron, beeswax, apricot, ginger. Drying and freezing mostly concentrate what is already there. Noble rot composes.
Three places made it famous, and they are the royalty of sweet wine.
Sauternes, in Bordeaux, is where the cool little Ciron river flows into the warmer Garonne and brews perfect morning mists. It is home to Château d’Yquem, the only wine ranked Premier Cru Supérieur in the 1855 classification, a rank created for it alone (our guide to the Bordeaux classifications tells the whole story). At Yquem, the pickers go through the vineyard five or six times or more, taking only the berries the rot has reached, and it is often said that each vine gives about one glass of wine. Great Yquem seems almost immortal: the 1811, the “comet vintage”, was still drawing raves from tasters in the late 20th century, and in 2011 a bottle sold for about 117,000 US dollars, a record for a white wine at the time.
Tokaj, in north-east Hungary, makes the wine Louis XIV is said to have crowned. Fans of classifications will enjoy this one: Tokaj was ranking its vineyards in the early 1700s, and a royal decree of 1737 closed the boundaries of the region, more than a century before Bordeaux’s 1855. Its great wine, Tokaji Aszú, is measured in puttonyos, after the baskets of noble-rotted aszú berries traditionally added to the base wine: the more baskets, the sweeter and more concentrated the wine. Since the 2013 harvest, every Aszú must reach at least the old 5 puttonyos level, 120 grams of sugar per litre, and 6 puttonyos is the top of the scale.
Above it sits one of wine’s true unicorns: Eszencia, the juice that seeps out of the rotted berries under their own weight, with no pressing at all. It is so sugary that the yeast can barely work: after years of slow fermentation it may reach just 3 percent alcohol. It is often served not in a glass but by the spoonful, sometimes from a crystal spoon. It is about as concentrated as wine gets.
Germany is the third great home of noble rot. Its Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese are made from overripe, usually noble-rotted berries picked one by one, shrivelled to raisins for a Trockenbeerenauslese, and the most famous are Riesling. They include some of the most expensive white wines in the world, such as Egon Müller’s Scharzhofberger Trockenbeerenauslese. Across the Rhine, Alsace makes the same magic under the name Sélection de Grains Nobles (more in our Alsace wine guide), and the Loire has its own version in Coteaux du Layon, Quarts de Chaume and Bonnezeaux.
Why kings loved them, and why we stopped
So why does nobody order them any more? Three honest reasons.
Sugar changed sides. For most of history, sweetness was rare, precious and aristocratic. Today sugar is everywhere and cheap, and we link it with soda, not with kings.
Cheap sweet wine poisoned the well. Decades of industrial, sugary bottles taught the world that sweet meant bad. German Riesling went through exactly the same thing.
“Dessert wine” became a prison. The label filed these wines at the end of the meal, the end of the list and the end of the night, when everyone was already full.
All three reasons are about image. None of them is about what is in the glass. Which means the wines themselves, some of the hardest to make and longest-lived drinks humans produce, are now remarkably underpriced. A classified Sauternes, a neighbour of Yquem in the 1855 ranking, often costs less than a village Burgundy from the Côte d’Or. That is the opportunity, and here is how to seize it.
How to drink sweet wine
Four rules to get the most out of them.
1. With dessert, the wine must be sweeter than the dish. Otherwise the dessert flattens it and the wine tastes thin and sour.
2. The real magic is sweet plus salt. Forget dessert altogether: the immortal pairings are Sauternes with Roquefort and Port with Stilton, where salt and sugar balance each other and what is left is pure fruit. Salted nuts, aged Parmesan, even fried chicken with Moscato d’Asti: all glorious. Foie gras belongs here too, with a Sauternes or a Tokaji: the sugar meets the fat, and the wine’s acidity keeps the pairing fresh. Our guides to wine and foie gras and wine and a cheese board go into the details.
3. Serve them cool and pour them small. Sweet whites are best cool, from about 6 to 8°C for Moscato d’Asti to 10 to 12°C for a great Sauternes or Tokaji, because the chill keeps the sugar fresh. Red fortified wines like Port, Banyuls and Maury go a little warmer, around 14 to 16°C. And pour small: these are concentrated wines, and half a glass is a full experience. That is why they come in half bottles. It is not stinginess, it is the right dose: a 37.5 cl half bottle serves six.
4. An open bottle is not an emergency. Thanks to the sugar, and for fortified wines the alcohol, most sweet wines keep happily in the fridge for a week or more once opened, and Madeira for months. The exceptions are fizzy Moscato d’Asti, which loses its bubbles within a day or two, and vintage Port, best finished within a few days. One bottle, many quiet Tuesday-night glasses: they are the most relaxed fine wines you can own.
Three bottles to start with
Around 15 euros: Moscato d’Asti. From a good producer, well chilled, with brunch, fruit or salty snacks. Zero intimidation, pure joy, 5.5 percent alcohol. If someone tells you it isn’t serious, smile and pour them a glass. That usually ends the argument.
20 to 40 euros, the revelation: a half bottle of noble-rot wine. A Sauternes from a classified estate, a Coteaux du Layon from the Loire (or, stretching the budget, a Quarts de Chaume), or a German Auslese, which often carries a touch of noble rot. This is where the honey, saffron and apricot of noble rot become real, ideally with a blue cheese on the table. This is the bottle that converts people for life.
The pilgrimage: Tokaji Aszú, 5 or 6 puttonyos. The wine of kings at a price mere mortals can reach: a good 5 puttonyos starts at around 35 euros for a 50 cl bottle, and the best 6 puttonyos run from 70 to well over 100. An absurd bargain for what is in the glass. And one day, once, for a birthday with a zero in it: Yquem, or a spoonful of Eszencia. Life-list material.
The recap
Every sweet wine solves the same problem: the sugar has to outlast the yeast. There are four ways to do it:
- Stop the fermentation: Port, Banyuls, Pedro Ximénez, Madeira, Moscato d’Asti.
- Dry the grapes: Vin Santo, Recioto, vin de paille, Vin de Constance.
- Freeze the grapes: German Eiswein, Canadian Icewine.
- Noble rot: Sauternes, Tokaji, Trockenbeerenauslese, Sélection de Grains Nobles.
Drink them cool, in small glasses and next to something salty, buy half bottles, and never apologise for the sugar. Kings didn’t.
The greatest wines nobody drinks. Well, almost nobody. Welcome to the club.
If you want to keep going, our guides to the Bordeaux classifications, Alsace wine and ice wine go deeper into three of the doors above, and you can browse everything we have on learning wine from one place.
Frequently asked questions
How is sweet wine made?
A sweet wine is a wine where some of the grape sugar survived fermentation. There are four classic ways to get there: stop the fermentation (with grape spirit, as in Port, or with cold, as in Moscato d'Asti), dry the grapes until the sugar overwhelms the yeast (Vin Santo, Recioto), freeze them on the vine (ice wine), or let noble rot concentrate them (Sauternes, Tokaji).
What is noble rot?
Noble rot is Botrytis cinerea, a fungus that usually ruins grapes. With misty mornings followed by dry, sunny afternoons it turns benign: it pierces the skins, water evaporates and the berries shrivel. The juice left inside is concentrated and picks up flavours of its own, such as honey, apricot, saffron and ginger. It is behind Sauternes, Tokaji Aszú, German Trockenbeerenauslese and Alsace Sélection de Grains Nobles.
Should sweet wine be served chilled?
Mostly, yes. Sweet whites are best cool: Moscato d'Asti around 6 to 8°C, ice wine 8 to 10°C, Sauternes and Tokaji a little warmer at 10 to 12°C, because the chill keeps the sugar fresh. Red fortified wines are the exception: Port, Banyuls and Maury go just below room temperature, around 14 to 16°C, and tawny Port at 12 to 14°C.
How long does sweet wine last once opened?
Longer than almost any dry wine. Recorked in the fridge, a Sauternes or a Tokaji keeps for a week or two, a tawny Port for several weeks and a Madeira for months. The exceptions are fizzy Moscato d'Asti, which loses its bubbles within a day or two, and vintage Port, best finished within a few days.
What food goes with sweet wine?
Salty food, even more than dessert. Sauternes with Roquefort and Port with Stilton are classics because salt and sugar balance each other, and Tokaji with foie gras works because the wine's sugar meets the fat while its acidity keeps it fresh. With dessert, the wine must be sweeter than the dish, or it will taste thin and sour.
What is the sweetest wine in the world?
Tokaji Eszencia, from Hungary, is usually cited as the sweetest. It is the juice that seeps from noble-rotted berries under their own weight, so rich in sugar that it can take years to ferment to just a few percent alcohol. It is often served by the spoonful.
